Not for the first time in his nine years of office Hugo Chávez has given viewers of his weekly live TV show, Aló Presidente, a surprise. He said the group which has led Latin America’s longest-running insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), should unconditionally release more than 700 hostages. Only months ago he pressed for diplomatic recognition of the Marxist group. Now he called on Farc’s leader, Alfonso Cano, to lay down arms after four decades: ”The guerrilla war is history.”
You could have heard the sound of jaws dropping from Bogotá to Washington. Quite why the most prominent supporter of Colombia’s largest rebel group performed this U-turn is unclear. It could be for pragmatic reasons. His comments came a day after Colombia announced the capture of two Venezuelans, one a national guard officer, with 40 000 rifle rounds allegedly intended for the Farc. Ever since laptops containing 16 000 files were seized in a raid on a Farc camp in Ecuador Chávez has battled accusations that high-ranking Venezuelans helped Farc obtain weapons and funding. Turning the tables on Farc could be a way of avoiding being implicated by Colombia in a venue like the Organisation of American States.
Or it could be because Chávez genuinely believes Farc’s cause is lost. Its legendary leader, Manuel ”Sureshot” Marulanda, has died, and others have been killed or captured, or have defected. In 1999 Farc persuaded the then president, Andrés Pastrana, to cede control of 40 000km2 of territory in exchange for talks, but its refusal to make concessions and its use of the demilitarised zone to rearm led to the election of Ãlvaro Uribe, whose forces have now pushed it back into the far reaches of the jungle. Uribe has his own problems with compromising files on computer disks held by rightwing paramilitaries, but it has long been time for Farc to end its armed struggle.
If Chávez is reinventing himself as a leader Barack Obama could do business with he should not stop there. Venezuela is a democracy, but its institutions have been hollowed out by a president assuming all control. Parliament is a rubber stamp, while the central bank, the courts and the military are all politicised. It is not party loyalty but managerial competence that these institutions need. These should be the salad days of Venezuela’s oil boom, not a time of shortage. But the country with the greatest oil revenue in Latin America now has the region’s highest inflation rate. If Chávez worked to make his own institutions more accountable, he would do more than secure his leadership; he would cement the gains his revolution has made for Venezuela’s poor. —